


A Bad Case of Loving You

by lostlenore



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Doctors & Physicians, Friends With Benefits, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-26
Updated: 2015-04-26
Packaged: 2018-03-23 14:51:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3772327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lostlenore/pseuds/lostlenore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one where Ransom and Holster are first-year medical interns at Sacred Haus hospital, aka the Scrubs AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Bad Case of Loving You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aroceu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aroceu/gifts).



> Aroceu- I took your 'everyone thinks we're together/we think we're together' prompt and ran with it, so I hope this is okay. 
> 
> To everyone who listened to me yell about this on twitter- thank you for being terrible enablers, you guys are the best.

 

The nurses laughing at Holster is nothing new, but it’s not April who’s laughing at him when he gets in at nine, travel mug of coffee clutched in his fist like a life raft and squinting at the small mountain of medical files Mystery Nurse dumps in front of him. April is at least merciful enough to wait until Holster is partially awake before she mocks him. Mystery Nurse is cooing, like, the sound pigeons and people confronted with baby deer make, and it’s throwing him off.

“Lardo warned me it was bad but I thought she was exaggerating,” Caitlyn sniggers, which explains nothing. Lardo is a surgery jock of the highest order; she and Ransom deign to rub shoulders with the plebs of Internal Medicine only when united under the common goal of giving Holster shit. Or for doughnuts. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.

None of this tells him why Caitlyn’s got her phone out and is grinning so hard Holster can count all her teeth.  

“Where the fuck is April?” He glares at Mystery Nurse. Maybe he unhinged his jaw and swallowed her. It’s not outside the realm of possibility; dude looks like he’s fifty years old with how he’s rocking the 5 o’clock shadow at 9am. Maybe Holster needs to finish his coffee.

“She traded shifts for a hot date tonight, apparently. I’m Nursey,” the guy sticks out his hand and Holster blinks several times before he’s sure he’s heard him right. 

“Nurse…Nursey.” He’s fighting the urge to ask if this is a really terrible joke—Holster’s been skipping leg day so Nursey could probably take him in a fight—when Ransom rocks up with Lardo in tow.  

He deliberately sets a second cup of coffee on top of Holster’s files before slinging an arm around his neck. Holster obligingly stoops a little so he can reach. He smells like Holster’s deodorant because Ransom is a lazy fuck who steals Holster’s shit when he can’t find his own, and Holster should probably mind that more than he does. As it is he curls his fingers into Ransom’s side and tugs him a little closer.

“I thought I ditched you in the parking lot,” he says, not without affection because he left Rans literally fifteen minutes ago. They always ride in together if they’re on the same shift.

“Sharing the wealth bro, Doc Martin made a Starbucks run and had some leftovers.”

“Aww, dude, see this is why you’re my favorite.” The coffee is still warm, which means Ransom must’ve brought it directly to him. Holster is absurdly touched.

“ _Bro_.”

Nursey clears his throat and Holster shoots him what he’d like to think is an intimidating glare. Lardo looks amused, so it’s probably not working.

“‘Sup Lardo?”

Lardo shrugs. Her hair is sticking straight up today, and it adds a solid two inches to her tiny height.

“Got a surgery at ten so I’m on my way to the caf to get my doughnut on. You coming?”

Holster gestures to stack of medical files. It looks bigger than it did a moment ago.

“Gross. Have fun with that dude, I’m out.” Ransom gives him a lazy, one-armed hug and leaves with a promise to catch him at lunch. When Holster dares to look back at the nursing desk both Caitlyn and Nursey are laughing again.  

“ _What_ ,” he has rounds with Dr. Zimmerman today and zero time for this shit. “Don’t you have sick people to harass?”

“Nah, you’re loads more fun. Also, you might want to return your boyfriend’s scrubs before he has to go into surgery.”  

 “Wha-” He looks down and sure enough the scrubs he’d grabbed from the laundry on his way out the door this morning are surgery greens that are a bit too short in the pants, a bit tight around his shoulders, instead of the internal medicine blues. There’s more snickering from the peanut gallery. Holster’s face is undoubtedly a new and exciting shade of pink.  

“Fuck.”

“It would seem so,” Caitlyn says, serene. Holster doesn’t even have time to correct her because Shitty likes to lurk in the cafeteria and he might actually laugh about this until he passes out. Holster can probably catch them at the elevators if he starts running now.

“I’ll come back for these I’ve just got to-”

“Go on,” Nursey smirks. Bedpans, Holster thinks as he takes off. That asshole is getting so many bedpans.

***

See, the thing about him and Ransom is that they have an arrangement. They live together–have since college and will for the foreseeable future—and they work together and they’ve been best friends for nine years come September. Holster trusts Ransom more than he trusts almost anyone else. He _knows_ Ransom, knows that he loves his job and is really fucking good at it. Knows the work he put in to get where he is.

Where they are.

So it just makes sense that this job, this horrible, all-consuming, wonderful job that leaves him a withered husk of a human being at the end of the day makes it difficult to find someone to be with. Holster isn't ever going to be mad when Ransom gets paged during dinner, and Ransom knows not to pry when Holster needs to mainline old episodes of 30 Rock and just not think for a while after doing rounds in the neonatal ward. They get it. And if it’s easy to just stop looking for anyone else, if Holster starts to think that he doesn’t want to look for anyone else, well. That’s his problem to deal with.

Holster doesn’t bother explaining this to the nurses, or to Shitty, or even Lardo, who he thinks would probably get it. The one part of this arrangement he and Ransom are perfectly clear on is that they don’t talk about it. Holster’s never heard of best-friends-with-benefits and he’s not going to be the one to try and fix what isn’t broken.

***

The morning excitement fades, and rounds with Dr. Zimmerman are blessedly, beautifully normal.

Dr. Zimmerman doesn’t treat the interns like human footstools, which is more than he can say for some of the other, more senior doctors. Holster likes him. He’s hilariously bad with crying people and has an ass that just won’t quit, but Holster has never once questioned that Dr. Zimmerman cares about each of his patients. Ransom agrees with everything except the ass part, to which he's registered frequent and strenuous objection. Ransom’s med school reputation was ‘class hottie’ and he’s still loathe to give it up, not that it stops most of the hospital from swooning over Dr. Zimmerman and calling him McSteamy behind his back.

Shitty calls him that to his face, but then Shitty’s very existence is an outlier. Holster thinks Shitty’s job is to provide the hospital with legal advice, but he can't conclusively prove it.  The reality is that he can most often be found commandeering the couch in the second floor lounge to watch his soaps. He certainly doesn't act like any lawyer Holster's ever met; Shitty is practically allergic to ties. Holster has never seen him wearing anything that couldn’t be found in a tacky Daytona Beach bait shop, and he lets Lardo braid his hair in the lounge while they talk shit about abstract expressionism. Occasionally he and Dr. Zimmerman barricade themselves in Shitty's office for days at a time to discuss Serious Hospital Business, though Holster isn't sure how serious they can really get when    . Shitty is a mystery wrapped in a puzzle and baked in an enigma.

His moustache is always impeccable though. It has its own facebook page.

 ***

Tuesday is the first time in weeks where both Ransom and Holster have the entire day off. That means lunch on Monday is devoted exclusively to spitballing plans over what to do with a beautiful, full twenty-four hours of free time.

Shitty is firmly behind either a spa day or private jets, Lardo is championing all-you-can-eat hot dogs, and Nursey, who has taken to sitting with them when he’s on the afternoon shift, is pulling strongly for Atlantic City.

Holster is only half-listening to them, much more focused on watching Ransom lick all the hot fudge off his spoon, which is why it takes someone saying his name a couple times before he registers the entire table staring at them.

“Are they always like this?” Nursey asks, looking put upon.

“It’s a blessing and a curse,” Shitty sighs. “You get used to it.”

“They’re just jealous,” Ransom hooks his ankle across Holster’s under the table. “Best friend sundaes are a long, storied tradition.”

“Yeah,” Holster agrees, and attempts to drown his feelings in caramel sauce.

“We were asking if you already had plans, you nerds.”

Ransom shrugs. “They’re screening a bunch of terrible old monster movies outside at the university tonight. Might as well, while the weather’s still nice. I’ve barely got to use my hip flask all summer.”

“Bro, that’s perfect,” Holster ignores the eyerolls around them, it’s totally a fistbump-worthy plan. Actually, it’d be a stellar date plan. If, you know, that was the kind of thing they did.  

The day kind of takes a dive from there. 

Smoker Greg is back after another asthma attack, and talking to him is always like watching a slow car pile-up and being unable to move, which, incidentally is what happens on the back end of the shift and they have a flood of crash victims in the ER to keep the surgery team busy. Holster is kept from the spectacle only because he's busy diagnosing a women with the early stages of Alzheimers, and it takes a while because everyone's crying, including him. 

The Janitor finds him curled up on the smoking stoop waiting for Ransom, whose last surgery is running late.

Holster wipes his eyes and takes a deep, shaky breath. He’s not crying anymore but he almost wishes he was, because the sadness is just sitting low in his stomach, immobile.  

“Am I in the way?” he asks when the Janitor doesn’t say anything.

“No you’re good. I’m just contemplating the unfairness of parallel universes.” He seems completely and bafflingly sincere.

“How’s that, um- how’s that working out for you?” Holster asks for lack of anything better to do rather than out of any real interest.

“I think we kind of got shafted. Like, I get that there’s not a perfect analogue, but this universe is kind of depressing.”

“Yeah, I know how you feel,” Holster says and watches as the sun sets over the dumpsters at the end of the alley.

***

Ransom looks as dead inside as Holster feels when he emerges half an hour later, wearing a pair of crocs Holster though he misplaced months ago. They’re not up for much except DVR’d episodes of Ancient Aliens and some hamburger helper.

The ratty green couch in the living room is the same one they rescued off a curb back in college, which means the middle is all collapsed and they end up leaning against each other as the night progresses and they slump further and further down into the cushions.  

Thankfully they have a bottle of vodka in the fridge so the night’s not a total wash. Holster tapes the little paper moustache they keep in a candy dish on the side table to the TV, and every time one of the ‘experts’ wears it Ransom laughs, warm, into Holster’s ear before he takes a shot. It gets them both drunk pretty quick. (On screwdrivers. They mix their alcohol with orange juice like responsible health professionals.) Still, Holster is old and out of practice with the whole binge-drinking thing, which gets boring after a couple of episodes. Ransom’s mouth is infinitely more interesting, lax when he kisses with one hand steady on his thigh, and unexpectedly needy when Holster laces their finger together.

The room is spinning dizzily, so Holster closes his eyes and lets Ransom lay him out along the futon. He thinks the keening sound he’s hearing might be him, but Rans is sucking at the place under his jaw that drives him crazy, all wet heat and the sting of teeth. Holster thinks distantly that he’ll be wearing turtlenecks for a few days before he stops really thinking at all.

 They fall asleep together on the futon, Ransom’s arm a familiar weight across his chest, and as Monday nights go it’s par for the fucking course.   

***

Holster gets a call from the hospital hellishly early. The street lights haven’t even gone off yet, still glowing dimly in the pre-dawn light. He’s got Ransom’s face mashed in his neck, and his arm is dead where Ransom is lying on it and Holster sort of never wants to move maybe ever, but he answers the phone anyways. Everyone knows it’s his and Ransom’s day off, they wouldn’t be calling if it wasn’t important.

It is.

Mrs. McKinney is one of Holster’s favorite patients. She comes in every month like clockwork and always remembers Holster’s name, his favorite kind of hard candy, and to ask cheekily after Holster’s ‘young man.’ She’s like every TV Grandma Holster never thought existed, and while he wishes she was healthy enough she didn’t have to visit so frequently, part of him is always happy to fill her in on hospital gossip and let her pat his cheek indulgently.

Lardo tells him in the voice she uses for distraught parent and crying children, that they admitted her to the ER about half an hour ago after she was hit by a drunk driver while walking her dog. She’s scheduled to go under for emergency surgery in an hour and Lardo’s been called in to assist.

It’s not even a question that he’ll be there.   

He leaves a note for Ransom left on the coffee table and another one taped to the fridge in case he misses the first.  

When Lardo picks him up five minutes later he’s already got his shoes on, a pair of extra scrubs in his backpack. Mrs. McKinney is on the good drugs when he gets in to see her, but not drugged up enough to miss the Pangea-sized hickey on Holster’s neck. She chides him gently for coming in on his day off, and he gives that statement the due consideration it deserves, which is to say none at all, and she responds with some insinuations about Ransom that would probably have Holster laughing if he wasn’t trying not to cry at the way her head is bandaged up.

“I’ll be mad at you if you’re still hanging around when I wake up,” she coughs, and Holster wraps her little wrinkled hand in his until the anesthesiologist kicks him out.  

The McKinney family is driving in for the procedure, so Holster stays until they arrive, and even after that when they ask him a bunch of questions about the procedure, clumped around him in a worried knot. He sits with them in the godawful plastic waiting room chairs until the light about the OR goes off and Lardo comes out looking like the sole survivor of the zombie apocalypse.

“She’s stable. Still asleep, but we’re going to keep an eye on her for a while.”

Holster’s whole body sags with relief. He doesn’t want to hear anything else, though he knows there’s plenty more to say. Eighty-year-old women don’t survive getting hit by cars without complications. From the tight line of Lardo’s mouth he expects those complications are manifold.   

He lets her speak to the family and calls Ransom to come pick him up.

***

“-and I held his foot like that for two hours. _Two hours_ bro, and Doc wouldn’t even scratch my nose for me, I had to rub it on the dude’s foot like a fucking animal.”

Holster makes a sympathetic noise and keeps rubbing circles into Ransom’s shoulders. Ransom is curled up in a pathetic ball, head resting on the table.

“That sucks bro,” Holster says, and steals a handful of his fries. Lardo scoffs.

“Dude, please. Last week a guy came in while I was on-call with one of those vibrating dildos stuck in his ass. It had been like three hours and it was _still vibrating_ when I took it out.” 

“Don’t lie to me Lardo you fucking loved that call." 

"You called it the best shift ever, and I know for a fact you have a selfie with that dude on your phone. Do you still follow him on twitter?”

Lardo is in the middle of disputing that when Dr. Zimmerman appears at their table, double-fisting slices of cheesecake. Holster thinks that’s probably a bad sign. He looks pretty wretched.

“Adam I need to talk to you for a minute.” Dr. Zimmerman’s eyes flick nervously around the cafeteria. It’s unsettling. Holster is unsettled. Also he called Holster Adam, which, Jesus Christ, Holster might be getting fired and it’s been at least a month since they wantonly destroyed any hospital property. If Zimmerman asks he has amnesia and doesn't remember anything about the last time he and Ransom played wheelchair derby. 

He tries to play it cool. Maybe there’s a hospital version of the statute of limitations. "Sure.”

Strange things are afoot at the Scared Haus hospital.

Ransom squeezes his hand under the table and Lardo sings, “someone’s in trouble,” but softly, like she’s worried he might actually be in trouble.

He follows Doctor Zimmerman out into the hallway, where the noise from the cafeteria gives way into the whir of machinery and bustle of hospital staff.

Dr. Zimmerman turns and somehow still manages to exude complete seriousness with a cheesecake in each hand.

“I need you to do a routine check-up on one of our VIP patients. I’ve already had April pull his chart for you, and it should be really basic, just...try and keep him from doing anything stupid please? As a favor. He has a tendency to end up places he shouldn’t.”

“Yeah because he’s a fucking snoop, Jack. You make it sound like he does it on accident,” Shitty says from behind him. Holster doesn’t yelp because he’s not someone’s tiny purse dog, but it’s a pretty near thing. How Shitty managed to sneak up on him wearing a violently orange shirt patterned with dancing pineapples is a mystery for the ages.

“What Jack’s trying to say is keep an eye on this dude, yeah? He’s tricky and we don’t want him rifling through our filing cabinets.”

“What is going on?” Holster is completely lost. “Is this guy a spy? Why does he want to get in our filing cabinets, most of the patient records are digitized now.”

“Board meeting,” Shitty and Dr. Zimmerman answer in unison. “And the files thing was more a figure of speech. Kent is very interested in…closing some loopholes in the way we operate here at Sacred Haus.” Dr. Zimmerman sounds apologetic, though not apologetic enough to keep from dumping this Kent guy on Holster.

Holster looks to Shitty for a translation. “When Jack got made Chief of Medicine he kind of re-wrote some hospital policy that made it easier for us to take on patients with nebulous insurance situations.”

“It’s not right to deny people medical care because they don’t—“ Dr. Zimmerman starts, and Shitty cuts him off with an affectionate, “—we know dude, we got it.”    

“…And you want me to keep him from shutting the hospital down. Cool. No pressure.” His palms are already sweating.

“Look, he’s going to try and charm you into letting him do what he wants. You’re totally immune to his charms, you’ll be fine. Take him on a tour of the hospital if you need to. Drag him down to look at the babies or something. Visitors love the babies.”

“Immune to his charms,” Holster repeats, disbelieving.

“Jack is…more easily persuaded—“

 “—Shitty, c’mon,”

“But you’re perfect! Zero chance of seduction. It’ll be a piece of cake. Just keep him outta our hair until it’s time for the meeting. I put April on him when he checked in but I’m afraid she’ll strangle him or lock him out on the roof or something.”

“Zero chance of seduction,” Holster repeats back. His brain hurts.

“That’s the spirit!” Shitty cheers, and then abandons him in the hallway while he’s still trying to process what’s just happened.

*** 

Kent Parson doesn't look like a villain out to seduce Holster so he can destroy the hospital. Then again, when Holster finds him he's camped out on his bed in nothing but a towel watching Mean Girls, which is a seduction of an incredibly specific kind. Holster gives him points for style, but zero for originality. The water dripping off his admittedly perfect abs doesn't make Holster want to suddenly indulge his every whim so much as it makes him want to get a mop. 

Zero chance of seduction indeed. 

April catches him outside the door to give him Parson's chart and laugh about how he tried to flex while she took his blood pressure, which makes him feel better about Shitty using his Big Dumb Infatuation to combat hospital espionage. 

Parson gets frustrated with Holster's lack of response in a record fifteen minutes, and tries to sneak out when Holster ducks out for clean thermometer wraps. He catches him halfway down the hall, trying to open the door to the fire escape. 

"Hospital Tour it is," he sighs, and sometimes being a six-foot-four former hockey player comes in handy because he can strong-arm Person into the elevator with minimal fuss. Parson claws at his arm and spews an impressively filthy string of curses.

"Have you ever considered hockey for your aggression issues?" Holster asks, mild.  

Parson makes an inventive, lewd gesture and glare balefully. It takes Holster back to sharing a shitty attic room with Ransom in college, and he spares a moment to feel nostalgic. 

"You're shitting me," Parson says when Holster pulls out the box of costumes stashed under the Pediatric's reception desk, to the unholy delight of a dozen bedridden children.

"This is the children's ward Parson, watch your fucking language." 

Chris, the goofy peds x-ray tech on duty, claps his hands in delight. 

"I call the shark!"

"Yeah bro you can have the shark." Chris is like sunshine personified. The kids around him recognize his status as Ultimate Pushover and take shameless advantage of it. If he's not in costume, it's a safe bet he's stealing cookies from the VIP lounge to distribute among them.  

Holster frowns at Parson. "Try not to be a dick. I know it's difficult, but do it for the children. Smile." 

He holds out the clown fish hat. 

Parson's frown deepens. 

Holster graciously waits five seconds for Parson to put it on before shouting, " _guys I found Nemo,_ " because Parson is a dick and deserves the fate of being slowly subsumed by a dozen sickly children squawking _MINE_ in terrifying unison. 

***

Holster can’t read the expression on Jack’s face when he appears in the doorway, arms crossed protectively over his chest while a very beleaguered Parson is pinned to the floor with the force of eight  toddlers, but from the way he says ‘Kent,’ pained and aching, Holster is 9000% sure they boned. More than that, probably, because Parson sees him standing there and yells, “Zimms! Get over here and help me would you,” and no one, not even Shitty calls Dr. Zimmerman ‘Zimms.’

He tries not to think about it, which means its suddenly all he can think about, and he books it out the door into the hallway so he can go find Ransom. True bros share the psychic pain of picturing their boss nakedly embracing board member douchebags.

“Are you sure?” Lardo asks dubiously when Holster lures her and Ransom to the cafeteria with promises of doughnuts. She can fit three into her mouth at once, Holster is grudgingly impressed.

"I'm pretty sure bro."

“Urgh, dude why would you tell me that?” Ransom punches him in the arm. “My eyes, bro. _My eyes_.”

“So that now every time you look at Dr. Zimmerman you’ll imagine him and Parson getting freak nasty,” Holster says. “What are friends for?”

“Can we please talk about something else,” Ransom turns pleading eyes on Lardo, who nods sagely.

“I did hear the on-call room was haunted.”

Ransom freezes, doughnut halfway to his mouth.

“Yeah, so apparently back in the 90’s these two girls were brought in from a Backstreet Boys concert where things had gotten _hella_ out of control. The surgeon on call was asleep, and didn’t answer his pager on time so when they died in the waiting room they stuck around to haunt the poor fucks who try and bunk there." She lowers her voice, clearly relishing the look of pure horror on Ransom's face. Ransom leans forward, like a moth drawn to a flame. 

"If you’re ever on shift, listen for the faint, lingering chorus of ‘I Want It That Way,’ and the sound of snap-bracelets.” Lardo pauses, drawing out the tension to its breaking point before making a loud snapping noise that causes Ransom to nearly fly out of his seat. 

“I knew it!” Ransom yells, in pure-panic mode. “I _knew_ someone was grabbing my butt holy shit ghosts are real! I’ve been getting _ghost-groped_ , Holtsy call Melinda Gordon—”

Lardo is giving Holster an incredibly judgmental eyebrow right now that he’s done absolutely nothing to deserve.

“Okay first, dude, Ghost Whisperer isn’t a real thing—ow, fuck that hurt dude—and second, Lardo is just making shit up because she knows  you’re supposed to be on-call tonight. She’s just messing with you bro.”

Lardo shakes her head, and she must have practiced this shit in the mirror because she stone cold doesn’t even crack a smile. “Nope. All true. I heard it from the Janitor.”

“See? There you go, the Janitor’s full of shit.” Ransom isn't looking convinced. He’s still got one hand cutting off the blood flow to Holster’s arm and doesn’t look like he’s thinking of releasing it any time soon.

“The Janitor knows everything, dumbass. He's on like ten government watchlists. For _timetravel_.”

“You kind of proving my point,” Holster starts, when Ransom cuts him off by taking his face in both Ransom's stupidly large hands.

“Bro I know what I felt,” Ransom says, with impressive gravitas given what they’re arguing. “There was nobody else in there with me _both times_ , and I definitely felt someone’s hands on me. I can't go back there alone!”

He looks like a kicked puppy, and Holster can feel himself already caving on what he knows is a awful idea in the making.

Behind Ransom’s back Lardo makes a noise like a whip cracking. Holster wishes he could argue, but it’s not like she’s wrong.   

***

Which is how Holster inevitably ends up spending the night in the on-call room, playing the world’s longest game of slap jack and watching Ransom slowly lose his goddamn mind.

Holster had shot down every ‘ghost-proofing’ tip Ransom had emailed him over the course of the afternoon on the basis that most of them used weird bodily fluids and the Janitor would find him and kill him, thus obligating Holster to haunt Ransom from the sheer irony of it all. The result of this is a series of distractions that go over very poorly, as Ransom rejects trivia crack, candy crush, and the Cosmo back issues from the late 90’s that Holster swiped from OBYGN because they’re hilarious. Holster wants to know what the corresponding fruit for his body type is, but Ransom isn't buying into it, even when he reads the 'Nine Incredible Ways to Prevent Boob Sag' article out loud.  

It’s a pretty slow night, so there’s not a lot to do but watch Ransom wind himself up tighter and tighter about the ghost thing. He jumps whenever there’s a loud noise in the hallway, and Holster knows if he gets called in to slice someone open like this there’s a very strong chance it ends in a malpractice suit. Holster has been navigating the delicate ecosystem that is Justin Olransi for nine years now. He’s the fucking Great Barrier Reef, the World Heritage site of people, and Holster loves him enough to let him work through his shit on his own, but there is actually no reason for this except Lardo being a troll and Ransom watching too many shitty ghost-hunting shows. 

He gives up and puts a sock on the door handle.

“You need to find your chill dude.”

“What’s- _oh shit_ ,” Holster pushes him gently back down onto the terrible bunk bed, careful to telegraph pretty explicitly where this is going. Ransom seems surprised but game, so he takes off his glasses and sets them safely out of the disaster zone.

Ransom’s eyes are wide as he watches Holster settle between his legs. His hands are shaking a bit, and he anchors them on the crook of Ransom’s knee.

“We doing this?”

“Yeah,” Ransom’s mouth is hanging open and he’s nodding dumbly, so Holster goes in for a kiss, sucks at Rans' lower lip while his finger tail up the warm skin of Ransom’s back, push his shirt up his chest and out of the way of Holster’s mouth.

Ransom stretches back, lifting his hips obligingly so Holster can tug the ugly scrub pants down around his ankles, along with the singular coarse blanket that adorns each bunk. 

He brings his lips to the divot of Ransom's hip, worrying the skin between his teeth until Ransom starts to squirm, knocking into the blunt edge of Holster's teeth with each roll of his hips until Holster has to wrap a hand around the back of his thigh, pinning him to the bed.

It tears a whine out of him, one hand coming to grip the back of Holster's head, palm hot and wide across the back of his skull. Normally Holster would push back a little, draw things out with a series of bruises until he had Rans shaking and pleading under his mouth, but time is of the essence. So he lets Ransom guide him to where he's hard and straining against a pair of tight black briefs Holster's sure he managed to shrink in the wash at some point, because they bypass snug and sail straight into indecent. 

The hand on the back of his head tightens on the short hairs of Holster's nape when he gets a hand inside the waistband of the briefs, nails biting against his skin just on this side of too sharp. Holster pushes the fabric down around Ransom's thighs and finally, _finally_ , gets his mouth on Ransom's dick. 

It's been awhile. Giving head is kind of like riding a bike though, and Holster is attentive if nothing else. He pays attention to the way Rans sighs when he hollows his cheeks and sucks him down, the way the sigh breaks in his throat when Holster runs his tongue along the underside of the shaft. It's not difficult; Ransom is incredibly responsive when you know what to look for, and Holster has done nothing but look for years. It's what he does now, pulling off enough to peer up at Ransom through his lashes only to get the ridge of his throat, and the wet, dark gash of his mouth. 

A few stuttering breaths and one particularly satisfying groan, and Holster doesn't need Ransom's breathless _I'm gonna_ to know that he's on the verge of coming down Holster's throat. There's a tremor-shocky pulse before Rans comes, and Holster swallows him down.

He's not expecting Rans to yank him off roughly and pull him up for a dizzying, open-mouth kiss, slack and loose. It's enough to distract him from getting a hand on his own dick, the way Ransom licks into him like they've got all the time in the world, but then Ransom snakes a hand down his pants and Holster has to muffle the noise of surprise he makes into Ransom's chest. It's sloppy and rough, but Holster isn't in the mood to draw things out. He's already embarrassingly wet and it doesn't take long before he's spilling into Ransom's fist, white knuckled and soundless.

They lie there panting, and Holster is perfectly content to drift like this, draped where he is across Ransom's chest, until movement is absolutely necessary and unavoidable. 

Which is obviously the cue for Ransom’s pager to go off where it’s jammed under Holster’s knee. They both freeze. There's a surreal moment where all Holster can feel is the vibration of plastic against his skin, and then the sounds of the hospital filter back in and Holster remembers where they are, and what a horrifically bad idea it is to be blowing his best friend and possible love of his life in their mutual workplace.

Ransom is throwing his clothes back on as fast as he can, he’s not  _looking_  at Holster, and Holster doesn’t know what he needs to say to fix this. He’s probably not as sorry as he should be because that was actually pretty great and he’d really like to do it again, but he still feels like he should be apologizing. Their hookups usually follow a fairly steady script, one that doesn’t involve ghosts or potential lawsuits. Holster deviated, and it happened so fast they’re both struggling to readjust.  

Holster reels Ransom in and pins him to the door with a kiss that’s all desperation, open-mouthed and seeking something to quell the rising tide of panic in his chest. They’ve just broken like 5,000 different friends with benefits rules and his plan to calm Ransom down has spectacularly backfired. They’re already going home, Holster thinks, might as well go big. He pours all of his confusion and hope into it, along with a generous amount of tongue. Curls his hands into soft green scrubs that smell like shitty hospital detergent and holds Ransom in place until he runs out of breath.

And, more than a frankly stellar orgasm, this seems to be what calms Ransom down the most. His eyes are bright and clear when Holster pulls away, none of the jangling nerves from earlier in the night.

“I’ve gotta,” says Rans and jerks the hand not covered with Holster’s jizz towards the hall, “yeah.”

“Yeah,” Holster says weakly.

And then he’s gone.   

***

Holster wanders out to the vending machines and gets a Twix and a high-five from the nurse sitting at the station out front who definitely heard them.

He's too jittery to just go back and wait, in a room that smells like sex and Ransom, for god knows how long, so he wanders.

Shitty is in the lounge watching Grey’s again. The fluorescent hospital lights cast his feature in an eerie glow, illuminating the monstrous bags under his eyes. Holster has no fucking clue what he’s doing hanging around the hospital, if it’s Shitty being mysterious or if it means something that he's here at all. Maybe Parse decided to tear the hospital apart and they're all out of a job. Maybe Shitty sat down on the couch hours ago and couldn’t be fucked to get up. Maybe both. Three AM has a way of making everything seem surreal though, so instead of saying any of that Holster slides into the open spot next to him and opens with, “so I might have majorly fucked up- like, irreparably, hugely fucked up.”

Shitty steeples his fingers under his chin and slouches back against the couch. “Everyone has sex in the on-call room at least once; it’s like a rite of passage. Don’t worry about it.”

“I- what? How do you know about that?”

“The walls have ears Holtsy. Or, well, the nurses do. By the time your boo gets out of surgery the entire hospital will probably know.”

“Christ.” Holster knuckles at his eyes until stars burst at the corners of vision. HR must be giving him time to get a head start, level the playing field a bit. 

Shitty actually looks over at him then, concerned. “Look, I can tell them to lay off if that’s what you want but most people kind of thought you were banging anyway so I’m not sure how much it’ll help.”

“We weren’t together! Aren’t. I mean- I don’t think so...”

Shitty turns to give him his full attention.

Holster spills his guts. His and Ransom’s arrangement, the way the weirdness of this week translated into waking up together every morning, the ‘haunted’ on-call room. Shitty looks both appropriately empathetic and exasperated at their stupidity in turn.

 “Okay, I’m gonna drop a knowledge bomb on you so listen up: you and Ransom? Have been in a relationship in, like, basically every way that matters for years now. I’ve seen couples who’ve been married longer than you’ve been alive who love each other less than you do." He sighs when Holster just stares at him blankly, like Holster's missing the point on purpose. 

"Look: you went to his parent’s for Canadian Thanksgiving, right? And then he went to yours on the American one. That's love, bitch.” He strokes his moustache thoughtfully then adds, “you should still talk to him though. Communication’s always important.

 Holster nods dumbly.

“Oh, and hey- we slayed those motherfuckers at the board meeting. Jack will probably tell you about it tomorrow, but thanks for distracting Parson, yeah?  Really saved our asses there dude. Though we might see him around more now since he weaseled his way into financial advising position, just a heads up.”

It’s kind of a lot to digest. His face must be doing something awful because Shitty pats him on the arm and coos a bit, like an asshole.

On the TV Cristina tells Meredith  _you’re my person_  and they dance it out to Tegan and Sarah. The credits roll and Shitty claps him on the shoulder and levers himself off the couch. They shuffle down the hall, Shitty to the cafeteria and Holster back to the bunks, which still smell of sex and Ransom’s aftershave.

He crawls under the sheets fully dressed and falls asleep staring at the cracks in ceiling, waiting for Rans to come back.

***

Ransom wakes him up at some ungodly hour with a hand on his shoulder and a hollowed-out tiredness in the lines of his face that warns he might pass out at any second. Holster’s afraid that if he sits down he’ll end up having to carry Ransom to the car and they’re so tired at this point it’d probably just get them back in the ER. He helps peel Rans out of his disgusting scrubs and leaves him propped up against the doorframe to go steal clean ones for both of them out of the laundry room.

There’s a moment, when he’s herding Rans into the elevator with one hand tight around his waist, where he thinks they might talk about this. The words are right there on the tip of his tongue and he clears his throat and gets as far as, “You know-” when the elevator jerks to a stop.

The Janitor wheels in, humming something about not being superman, and congratulates them on resolving their B-plot. Holster doesn’t even attempt to process that, just waves a tired thanks and drags Ransom away as soon as the doors open.   

The hospital is quiet in the way it never gets during the day, with only a small trickle of people wandering through the empty hallways. There’s a sliver of sunrise visible through the open air of the parking garage and it’s surreal, with the way their footsteps echo against the concrete. Holster feels weirdly out of time with the rest of the world except Ransom, who is slumped against him, letting Holster carry most of his weight.

 They ride home in silence except for the crinkle of plastic as Ransom breaks off pieces of the poptart Holster forgot was in his glove compartment and hands them absently to Holster in between stoplights. Holster has a moment of double vision where he sees Ransom curled against the window, backlit by the watery early-morning light, and then sees him with Shitty’s words bouncing around in his brain.

 _You’ve always been together, like, in basically every way that matters_.

He drums his fingers against the wheel which takes a considerable amount of brain power this late at night, so his mouth is running on autopilot when he says, “so according to Shitty we’ve been dating for like five years?”

Ransom makes a noise to show he's listening but stays slumped against the window.

“That’s what I said, but, like, I don’t think its complete bullshit?”

“I think I would’ve noticed us going on, like, dates bro.” He doesn’t sound like he’s rejecting the idea out of hand though, which Holster takes as a good sign. He sounds like he’s considering it, or maybe they’re both so tired they’ve bypassed panic and plowed straight through into exhausted delusion. He’s kind of hopes it’s the first one even if he’s not sure they’d be having this conversation at all if they could summon any sort of energy to filter their thoughts.

“Maybe it depends on what you count as dates. Remember when we went to all those Bruins games, or the time you took me up to Victoria Falls for the weekend? And I’m pretty sure I’ve rode a Ferris wheel with you dude. More than once. That's some textbook romance shit."  

“Fair. Okay, what about…nah I’ve met your parents. And we spilt holidays and chores already. Date night? Hmmm, I guess we do that already. Fuck.”  Rans frowns.

“Would anything even change?” Ransom looks ready to collapse but he’s not making any move to get out of the car, which is a good sign. 

"Do you want it to change?" Holster says, quiet. This is it, the million dollar question. And Holster’s spent all night thinking about it, but he still can't predict what the answer is going to be. Putting a name to whatever this is between them is scary, but the more Holster thinks about it the more he’s certain that none of the important things would change. They love each other too much for love to be their undoing.

“I could get behind that.” 

They shake on it. They fucking shake on it and then they stumble out of the car and into Holster’s bed. It’s five in the goddamn morning and not even the revelation of a decade-long love affair lurking right under his nose can keep him from crashing hard.

 Right before his eyes close Ransom busses him on the mouth. He misses, just brushing the corner of Holster’s lips in the dark.

“S’awesome,” he mutters, then passes the fuck out.

  

***

Holster has to be back at the hospital in six hours, but he gets another solid five hours of sleep and feels marginally like a functioning human when his alarm goes off. Rans makes a pathetic whining noise where he’s draped across Holster’s chest, and wipes his gross sweaty hands all over Holster’s face until he turns it off.

Yesterday is headache brewing in Holster's temple. He has to breathe deeply through the steam in his shower to force himself to calm down.

He can't panic or Ransom will sense his panic and also panic, he tells himself. 

Breathe.  

One thing at a time.

Ransom’s unexpectedly upright when Holster gets out of the shower though, which Holster was not at all expecting. He stumbles over the piles of clothes on the floor and squints angrily at the world but he's not running away screaming, or experiencing convenient amnesia to cover up second thoughts. Which is gratifying for a number of reasons Holster will examine more closely later, but especially because Ransom seems to be wearing his pants backwards and inside out. Holster opens his mouth to tease him about it and gets Rans' lips on his instead. He's got one hand cupping the base of his neck and his tongue in Rans mouth and it's too early for his brain to process anything besides _yes_ and _please_.

“Dude, did you get out of bed for a ‘Good Morning’ kiss?” He can't really stop himself smiling, even if Rans morning breath is fucking rank.

“Nah, I had to take a piss,” Rans mumbles into his chest. “Also, you’re wearing my scrubs again bro.”

“That’s not a no.” The delighted grin on his face kind of negates the sarcasm, and Rans shoulders past him to the bathroom grumbling.

It’s dizzyingly normal, except for how Rans totally got out of bed to kiss him good morning, so. Definitely the kind of change Holster can live with.

He shucks off the green scrubs and pulls on the correct blue ones. It looks like rain outside, so he steals a Samwell Biology hoodie out of the dryer. It's not going to keep him particularly dry, but Holster is more concerned with the smug reaction it elicits from Ransom before he passes back out on Holster's bed. And maybe he's soaked, but he's still smiling when he walks through the doors of the hospital to start his day.


End file.
